bitumen | Northwest Coast Energy News

Kitimat voices at the Joint Review: Peter G. King

Northwest Coast Energy News will use selected testimony from the Joint Review hearings, where that testimony can easily turned into a web post. Testimony referring to documents, diagrams or photographs will usually not be posted if such references are required. Depending on workload, testimony may be posted sometime after it originally occurred. Posting will be on the sole editorial judgment of the editor.

I’ve been a resident of Kitimat for 53 years and the issues, as I see them, are economic diversity and challenges. One of the problems we face is urbanization. We end up with whole populations centred in large areas. This may work fine when things are going well, but it doesn’t work fine when things break down. does it work?

In the Vancouver area, people live in Delta and work in North Vancouver or go to university in UBC and live in Abbotsford. This would involve a two-hour commute both ways, totalling four hours in travel.

Then there’s the cost of travel to and from work, counting vehicles, fuel, parking and all extras that go along with it. The commute can cost $40 a day, on average. Of course, this is — there is mass transit, but the problem with mass transit is it sets up in the most economical way for obvious reasons.

But by doing this, it adds an hour to the commute on either end, so now the commute is three hours each way, so there is a trade-off, but it’s equal in the end.

For both people to work with and the same amount of cash out of pocket, the person who drives to work ends up having to work two hours a day more to pay for the commute but by the time — the way home would work out to be the same.

Of course, you could live closer to work, but that involves the same financial trade-off; if you live near your work, your residence will cost more. If you work close to where you live, your job may not pay as well.

Social diversity. Let’s pick up where the home/work example left off. If you live in a small area, without trying, a person’s quality of life increases by adding three hours to their home or leisure time. Since everyone lives within 15-minute drive to work or 30-minute bus ride away, no parking.

Crime is a major social problem in large centralized areas. If there is a crime in Vancouver, there’s thousands of possible suspects over hundreds of square miles and it could take weeks and months to solve the crime. In a small area, you have three possible suspects; one was in the hospital, one was at work, leaving you with one suspect; crime takes eight hours to solve in small areas.

Violence, for instance, if you see a fight in the street in Vancouver area, you do not know either person, so you’re isolated from it. In small areas, there’s a good chance you know both parties; this gives you a greater need to get involved and help solve the issue.

Children. When you go to Vancouver, you seldom see children playing in the street. For one, traffic is so much higher, but making friendship bonds is a problem as well. In small areas, children on the street will go to the same school, play on the same hockey team, shop at the same grocery store, go to the same church. The odds of this happening in a large area is very remote.

Thirty minutes after leaving the Vancouver Airport Terminal, your sinuses plug up. The reason is the concentration of car, truck and industrial pollution in the air. Nature has the ability to clean itself if the concentration levels are not too high, but in large centres we always suffer from bad air quality and water quality from what we have seen earlier with many commuters, most of which is with engines idling.

If I went to a local river and put a teaspoon of oil in a rural river, it would not be noticed by anyone, not by the river, not by the wildlife, but in a large centre you could have the equivalent of one million teaspoons of oil put in river waterways just from the storm sewers.

The concentration of human, chemical waste in the septic sewer systems going into the waterways in Vancouver is evidenced from these problems.

This is why there’s the discussions of dead zones at the mouths of waterways of large populated areas in the world. A horse can carry 10 tonnes on its back as long as it’s done in small amounts over long periods of time. If you put a whole 10 tonnes on a horse’s back at one time, you would kill it, and you don’t have to be a scientist to understand why.

If you’re sitting down and drink four litres of bleach, you would die, but if you diluted it one-part-per-million in water and then drank it over a lifetime, you could drink four litres of bleach and there would be no effects on your body at all because you’d probably have — you’ve not overwhelmed your body. It may have benefits by preventing harmful bacteria’s from increasing in the water.

Chances of a spill. The busiest waterway in the world is the Suez Canal.
There were 7,987 ships of all descriptions passing through it in 2010; that is 22 ships a day. The channel is 24 metres deep and 205 metres wide in 2010. The channel is a single lane and passes at — I hope I pronounce it — Ballah bypass, and in the greater Bitter Lake contains no locks and seawater flows privy through the channel.

Some supertankers are too large to traverse the channel. Others can offload part of their cargo into channel boats, reducing their draft, then transit to reload at the other end of the channel.
The Douglas Channel is 1,400 metres wide at its narrowest part. That is seven times wider than the Suez Canal. The Douglas Channel is also 200 metres deep, that is eight times deeper than the Suez Canal.

Piracy off the Coast of Somalia has been a threat in the Suez Canal since the 21st century. Piracy is not a problem in the Douglas Channel.

War zones. The Suez Canal was a target in World War I, World War II, and a few regional wars, and probably is a target in the near future. Being in a war zone is not a problem for the Douglas Channel.

Global diversity. My family and I are very blessed. We are healthy, wealthy and happy. Do I, as a person, have the right to deny other people in the world the same dreams and blessing? If this permit is denied, people in other areas of the world will have to pay more for energy for different reasons. We see the tsunami, earthquakes putting pressure on Japan and its nuclear power program.

If it is denied, I will be able to pay less for our energy. Globally, is this fair?

If I have all the food and I refuse to sell it to 100 starving people, should I be surprised when they take it from me for force? Should I have the ability to stop other people in the world from getting energy? No. But I have the ability to control how the energy is used in an economic, social, environmentally responsible way.

In conclusion, I would like to encourage the approval of the export licence at Kitimat for economic, social, environmental diversification locally and worldwide.

Kitimat voices at Joint Review: Murray Minchin Douglas Channel Watch

By Murray Minchin

I’ve been here since I was about four years old. I’m 52-ish now so I’ve been here for 48 years. I’ve left for school, went to college. I would go travelling and then — but I always came back. Like the power of this place always drew me back.

I’ve hiked almost every mountain in the region and I’ve hiked the rivers and particularly the little tiny side creeks that run down the mountain sides here. And as you drive in there’s a little tiny creek that runs into the marina at Minette Bay.

So if you’re ever back, there’s a hint to you, there’s about 12 waterfalls on that little tiny inconsequential creek that nobody ever even thinks about. I suggest you take a walk up there because it’s incredibly beautiful. This area is loaded with places like that, that are singularly beautiful on a really small scale when you step back from the whole and you go into these little tiny spots. They’re just amazing.

I’ve sea kayaked quite a bit. My wife and I spent six months sea kayaking down the whole coast of British Columbia. We did two months in the winter, two months in the spring and fall and two months in the summer. So we did six months over the whole year.

It takes about two weeks when you’re out there for just the mess — the extra stuff in your head from our society and our way of life to just kind of drop away, and after about three weeks then you begin to open your eyes and you begin to feel comfortable in a place. Like you become essentially really comfortable in the environment.

When we got to Port Hardy we booked a motel room and walked in the motel room and we sat down on the floor and we started going through our gear and started talking.

It took about 15 minutes before we realized that there were chairs in the room and we could sit on them. Like we were just so in tune with being out in the bush and — like that really changes your perception of the world. You know, like you become a little more aware.

Now, like for me, when I walk into the forest here it’s like an embrace.
There’s — it’s a palpable feeling to me that I feel completely embraced and at home in this environment.

I dropped over in the Mount Madden or into the Skeena watershed into a cirque that was surrounded by waterfalls dropping into it. So I couldn’t hear anything but the waterfalls, and as I came around the lake I heard the sound of a grizzly bear just screaming his head off and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from because the sound was echoing off the rock walls.

You know, I had to hunker down under trees and then just stop and think,
okay, like take it easy, don’t do anything too fast, take your time, make the right
choice. Experiences like that sort of show you that you — our place in the environment isn’t as strong as we think we — as it is. Like the environment has a lot more drastic effect on us than we realize.

Oh, and it was a couple of decades later I was listening to the CBC radio and I heard that sound again, and evidently it was older mature cubs fighting over a kill, cause I recognized that sound right away. But when I was out there I didn’t know, I thought it was directed towards me, possibly.

My daughter was two or three years old when I began taking her into the forest. Just past here there’s the marina, and then if you take a trail past the marina, there’s a totem pole in the forest, and you take a walk past the totem pole, you follow this trail that goes along the shoreline. So she was on my hip and we were walking through the forest.

I walked off to the side and I picked a red huckleberry off the bush and then gave it to her, and she popped it in her mouth and then, like her eyes lit up and she started jumping, you know, because she started pointing and now I had to walk through the forest to every red huckleberry bush so that she could get a taste of the red huckleberries. Now that’s part of her life and that will be part of her oral history.

On part of that trip we had a couple experiences, — on our kayak trip we had some experiences- just trying to figure a way to frame this — like yesterday at Haisla we were saying that in particular with the whales, like they’re here but in the past there was a great number of them, you know.

On our kayak trip after leaving Bishop Bay we came out on to three sleeping humpback whales, which was an amazing experience for us. But as I understand now, in the past, there would have been a lot more. And I’m really — fills me with hope to hear that they’re coming back. And it’s some disconcerting to think that that could be jeopardized in any way.

Kanoona Falls. It’s just above Butedale. Like here water is everything. we got stuck there for four days in big storms near hurricane force storms and it was raining really hard. This river was in flood; it was up into the trees on either bank and it was running completely pure, like there was no sediment in it. There It wasn’t muddy. It was just a pure river running
wild. And this is what the Kitimat River must have looked like in the past, you know, running pure in flood and no sediment.

There’s so much rain here that in mid-channel — like a channel could be two or three miles wide and there’s so much rain coming off the mountains, through the rivers and streams into the ocean that the seagulls take freshwater baths at mid-channel. It makes me wonder, scientists being who they are, engineering being who they are, the Proponent trusting their advice, has made estimations on spill response and stuff with materials and saltwater.

In the winter here you’d have to go down a foot, probably, before you find saltwater and in fact we had the sea kayak 140 kilometres south from Kitimat before salted to encrust on our decks. That’s how much freshwater is out there.

So any of the Proponent’s estimations on spill response times in saltwater, which is denser of course, should be looked at or refigured because saltwater being denser would hold the product underneath the level of the freshwater on top.

Here it rains like crazy, just suggested by the moss that you can barely see in the contrasting photograph but the forest here filters the rain so that it enters
into the rivers and the rivers run clean and the salmon and the eulachon spawn in the clean river which brings the bears; the bears carry the fish into the forest, don’t eat all of the fish and then it feeds the forest when then filters the rains for the next — for the next salmon coming up.

It snows like crazy here, like I said, you guys are really lucky that you dodged one by coming here when you did. Like four-foot snowfalls are an amazing thing to you. You know, it’s not a snowfall it’s a force of nature.

If you catch a snowflake on your tongue, one of those snowflakes on your tongue you wait for it to melt, it doesn’t and you have to chew it; like they’re twice the size of a toonie, you know, and a quarter inch thick. It’s hard to imagine but it’s a force of nature when it’s snowing like that which brings concerns about access issues, obviously.

[There are] access issues, just daily access issues anywhere, particularly on to logging roads or access roads into the wilderness, there are going to be of a great concern and even more so in emergencies when equipment and materials have to be moved anywhere.

Another problem we have here in thinking about liquid petroleum product moving through this territory is the length of out winters. The average night time low is below freezing for five months of the year and for another one of those months it’s just one degree above freezing; so things can lock up and be under ice for months at a time.

If there is any slow leak — for lack of a better term — which we haven’t been able to iron out through the information request process, you know, a spill could go for weeks without being recognized, even if the weather is good enough to get a helicopter up to fly over the area. Things could be under the ice and invisible until it gets to Kitimat and somebody notices that there is a spill happening.

This is a sapling that is growing in an estuary and it tried, I mean it tried everything it had, it had branches ripped off, the prevailing winds and it struggled but eventually it just got pushed over and died because it was in the wrong place, which I think much like this proposal and this attempt to get tar sands, bitumen from Alberta to Asia and California is — it’s just in the wrong place.

So this, to me, this is in the wrong place and this is just the first such proposal that’s reached this level of inquiry or to reach the Joint Review Panel stage, it doesn’t necessarily make it the right one and that’s really important, especially considering how much — how many forces they’re being applied to use. Well, to buy different entities to approve this project.

It’s really important to remain cognisant of the fact that this is just the first
one; it doesn’t make it the right one.

Getting back to the environmental aspect of this; this is a nurse log. You can’t see it because of the contrast of the projector. But it’s a nurse log with little tiny seedlings of more hemlock trying to grow through it. The fungus is breaking down the log. And this natural system, if it’s allowed to play out, will recover.

If we give this place a chance to recover, it will; the cumulative effects of all the industry that’s been in here and the damage it’s done over time.

It’s shocking to think in 60 years you can kill a river. And that’s what’s happened here. We’ve almost done it. Like the salmon are hanging on because of the hatchery. The eulachon are almost gone.

If we give it a chance, it can recover. The humpback whales are coming back this far into the channel. Like we saw one in front of the — I don’t know if you’ve eaten at that — the restaurant here, but last year we were here and there was one feeding right outside on the beach, just off — about 100 feet off the beach.

So if we give it a chance, it will recover. And to threaten that in any way is — morally, for me, it’s just wrong. To risk so much for so little short term gain is not part of my mindset. I can’t comprehend that.

Like this spruce on Haida Gwaii; it’s on the Hecate Strait side of Haida Gwaii. You know, it’s in from the beach a little bit but, you know, with the 120 kilometre an hour, 100-whatever an hour kilometre an hour with northerly outflow winds we have around here, even a place like this would get spray from bitumen that’s coming in at high tide.

This is a tree that’s just barely hanging on, on Cape George. It’s on the southern end of Porcher Island with Hecate Strait in the background. And it’s just an example of what things have to do here when — to try and survive when the environment is so severe.

We paddled up into here on our sea kayaking trip, we came in at high tide and we were looking up at the rocks and then back into the distance and there was still nothing growing. It was just incredible to think.

So after we set up camp, I came around here and then took this photograph because where the water is, is high tide and beach logs are normally pushed up down the line along the shoreline, you know, nice and neatly tucked against the forest by the high tides.

these are just scattered all over the rocks, and that’s because the waves there are so big in the wintertime when the southeast storms come in that, I mean, like there’s nothing living for 10 feet up and, I don’t know, 70, 80 feet back because of the continual, every year storms coming in and pushing these logs and rolling them around.

Huckleberries, beach grasses, hemlock trees, anything will — if there’s any available space for something to grow, it’s going to grow. So this just speaks to the fact that the storms here are so continual and so severe that it’s a recipe for disaster.

You get waves crashing in on — so high onto a ship that the spray is getting down into the air ducts and down into the mechanics of the ship and then you’re adrift.

It’s a different — like after you — from travelling east, once you come into the Skeena Valley and you cross over that coast Range Mountains, everything is different. All your precepts from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, don’t matter here. There are severe environmental risks here beyond anything else in Canada.

I mean, the mountains are so young. The seismicity of the area is the area is questionable because there hasn’t been that much accumulated evidence over time. So it’s just something to be aware of.

It’s a place called Cape George on Porcher Island, which is just above Kitkatla.

There is Cape George, and this is just a storm that happened to miss us, but we were stormbound there for about four days.

I ask of you that you really consider that responsibility. You know, obviously you do, but it’s important for us to know that you, that you take that responsibility really seriously because like the — in t he Federal Environmental Assessment Review Office Reference Guide, as a guide to determining whether a project is likely to cause a significant environmental effect or not, it’s quoted as saying:

The Act is clear that the project may be allowed to proceed if any likely significant adverse environmental effects can be justified in the circumstances.

So what possible circumstances are there to risk such a place and to risk so many First Nations cultures?

So what I was saying was if you give nature a chance to heal, it will heal itself, and that’s what’s happening here and that’s what the Haisla elders were telling us yesterday, that this place wants to heal itself and it can if we give it a chance.

You know, to add more risk to the cumulative damage that’s already been done here, I think, would be essentially a crime. It should be given a chance to heal.

Another thing that Mr. Ellis Ross said yesterday was, you know, much like he’s making his own history, his oral history today and in his life, like you are as Panel Members making your own history as well and your ancestors are going to speak of what decision you made and the consequences of that decision.

TransCanada says it will reapply to build Keystone XL pipeline

TransCanada has issued a statement saying that it will apply to the United States government to build the Keystone XL pipeline from the Alberta bitumen sands to Texas.

The statement reads, in part:

This outcome is one of the scenarios we anticipated. While we are disappointed, TransCanada remains fully committed to the construction of Keystone XL. Plans are already underway on a number of fronts to largely maintain the construction schedule of the project,” said Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer. “We will re-apply for a Presidential Permit and expect a new application would be processed in an expedited manner to allow for an in-service date of late 2014.”

TransCanada expects that consideration of a renewed application will make use of the exhaustive record compiled over the past three plus years.

“Until this pipeline is constructed, the U.S. will continue to import millions of barrels of conflict oil from the Middle East and Venezuela and other foreign countries who do not share democratic values Canadians and Americans are privileged to have,” added Girling. “Thousands of jobs continue to hang in the balance if this project does not go forward. This project is too important to the U.S. economy, the Canadian economy and the national interest of the United States for it not to proceed.”

TransCanada will continue to work collaboratively with Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality on determining the safest route for Keystone XL that avoids the Sandhills. This process is expected to be complete in September or October of this year.

TransCanada has committed to a project labour agreement with the Laborers International Union of North America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada, AFL-CIO, the International Union of Operating Engineers and the Pipeline Contractors Association. Any delay in approval of construction prevents this work from going to thousands of hard-working trades people.

TransCanada’s investment of billions of private dollars would create thousands more jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The company has contracts with over 50 suppliers across the U.S.. Manufacturing locations for Keystone XL equipment include: Texas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Indiana, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Arkansas, Kansas, California and Pennsylvania. The benefits these companies and the people of their states continue to be delayed and the negative impacts will be felt.

Girling adds TransCanada continues to believe in Keystone XL due to the overwhelming support the project has received from American and Canadian producers and U.S. refiners who signed 17 to 18 year contracts to ship over 600,000 barrels of oil per day to meet the needs of American consumers.

Links January 12, 2012

Reuters Analysis: Ottawa courts local anger with pipeline jibes

Globe and Mail
Clark’s new chief of staff advised Harper, lobbied for Enbridge

Kitimat weighs up the risks of oil and gas

Why not end the Northern Gateway in Prince Rupert?

B.C. coast is hostile country for oil, pipeline panel told

Is there a better route for Enbridge’s oil?

Redford questions Northern Gateway hearings’ credibility

CP via Canadian Business Northern Gateway hearings move on, aboriginal blockade of treaty office stays

Tyee

via CP

Northern Gateway hearings on move to Terrace, B.C.

The Expert’s Report that Damns the Northern Gateway Pipeline

Calgary Herald Enbridge subsidiaries reported 175 pipeline leaks in U.S. since 2002: data

Financial Post Gateway gate may be closing

Growing controversy as Northern Gateway Joint Review hearings begin at Kitamaat Village

Heiltsuk elders arrive — Elders from the Heiltsuk First Nation at Bella Bella arrive at Kitamaat Village on the evening of Jan. 9, 2011. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

The long awaited Joint Review Panel hearings into the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline begin Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. at the Haisla Recreation Centre in Kitamaat Village.

Elders from the Heiltsuk First Nation at Bella Bella and from the Kitasoo/Xaixais First Nation at Klemtu arrived at the Kitamaat Village dock shortly after 5 p.m. Monday evening.

The elders will take part in the opening ceremony at Kitamaat Village Tuesay morning, along with the leaders and elders of the Haisla First Nation.

Members of the Haisla and other First Nations will be first to testify, followed by other residents of Kitimat. It is understood that Enbridge, which has proposed building the pipeline, will only have a token presence at the hearings. Enbridge officials will likely give most of their testimony when the hearings reach Edmonton.

The hearings, already controversial on a national level, became more heated Monday when Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver issued an open letter accusing radical environmentalists under foreign influence of blocking the project and also undermining the Canadian economy.

Controversy also grew late Monday when an article in the Terrace Daily by editor Merv Ritchie claimed that Tuesday’s hearings will be disrupted by agents provacateurs. Ritchie says the paper received calls concerning statements made by some of the passengers on inbound fights to Terrace Kitimat airport.

“We are paid protesters”, stated one among a group, as reported to us “We are coming to discover the emotional issues of the people at the protests.”

Members of the local groups are also saying that the Joint Review Panel has shortened their allotted presentation time from three hours to one half hour.

Harper concerned Joint Review hearings being “hijacked by foreign money”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters at a photo op in Edmonton on Friday, January 6, 2012, that he is concerned about the possibility that the Joint Review hearings on Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline would be “hijacked” by “foreign money, to really overload the public consultation of regulatory hearings for the purpose of slowing down the process.”

Harper said what he called the slow process of the hearings “was not good” for the Canadian economy, he said. “We have to have processes in Canada that come to a decision in a reasonable amount of time, and processes that cannot be hijacked,” Harper said. “The government of Canada will be taking a close look at how we can ensure our regulatory processes are effective and deliver decisions in a reasonable amount of time.”

Harper added that his government would be watching the Joint Review hearings closely and added his government may review the public consultation procedure to make sure they are not overloaded solely for the purpose of slowing down the process.

Harper’s comments did not identify the “foreign money,” but he was clearly referring to criticism from blogger Vivian Krause, the pro-bitumen sands group Ethical Oil and right wing columnists who are crusading against Canadian environmental groups for accepting money from U.S. sources. Harper, apparently, made no mention of foreign investment in the bitumen sands and the pipeline projects.

Links January 6, 2012

Vancouver Sun series
Oil spills costly to companies and environment, yet seem inevitable despite technology

Financial Post
Tiny port, new energy battleground

Chinese companies take the long view on Northern Gateway pipeline

Georgia Straight
ForestEthics responds to new poll on Northern Gateway oil pipeline

Globe and Mail
China’s oil-sands deal will have lasting impact

Athabasca deal gives China an oil sands project of its own

Montreal Gazette
B.C. pipeline foes unmoved by Enbridge oath Michigan spill; Oil route would cross many streams

Wall Street Journal Marketwatch
Big Gateway pipeline hearings starting in B.C. Commentary: Battle lines drawn, oil companies finally come forward

Oil spill caused “unexpected lethal impact” on herring, study shows

Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)

A 53,569 gallon (202,780 litre) spill of bunker oil in San Francisco Bay in 2007 had an “unexpected lethal impact on embryonic fish,” according to scientists from the University of California at Davis and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who spent two years on follow-up research after the spill, looking at the effects of the spill on Pacific herring.

One significant finding from the study is that different oil compounds, for example crude or bunker oil, likely have different effects on vulnerable environments.

On November 7, 2007, the container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge, breaching two fuel tanks and sending the bunker oil into the bay. Television images of the accident were seen around the world.

Damage to the Cosco Busan. ( PO 3 Melissa Hauck/US Coast Guard)

The oil spill polluted the nearby North Central Bay shoreline spawning and rearing habitat for herring, described by the study as “the largest coastal population of Pacific herring along the Continental United States.” The spill happened a month before the herring spawning season.

The herring from the estuaries of San Francisco Bay migrate in large schools up the Pacific Coast to the Bering sea, and are food for whales, other mammals, salmon and birds. After two years at sea they return to the spawning grounds.

The study also notes: “Herring are a keystone species in the pelagic food web and this population supports the last commercial finfish fishery in San Francisco Bay.” It adds: “Although visibly oiled shorelines were cleaned, some extensively, only 52% of the oil was recovered from surface waters and land or lost to evaporation. The amount of hidden or subsurface oil that may have remained near herring spawning areas is unknown.”

The study, Unexpectedly high mortality in Pacific herring embryos exposed to the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay, was published Monday, Dec. 26, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study suggests that even small oil spills can have a large impact on marine life. Gary Cherr, director of the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory and lead author of the study says, “Our research represents a change in the paradigm for oil spill research and detecting oil spill effects in an urbanized estuary.”

That’s because the study builds on research following the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which released 32 million gallons (121 million litres) of crude. The Exxon Valdez spill also happened close to the herring spawning season and studies since then have shown mortality and abnormalities in the fish in Prince William Sound.

The San Francisco study shows that the bunker oil accumulated in naturally spawned herring embryos. At low tide, the oil then interacted with sunlight in the shallower regions of the estuary, killing the embryos. A control group of herring, fertilized in a laboratory and place in cages in deeper water, were protected from the combination of oil and sunlight but still showed “less severe” abnormalities.

“Based on our previous understanding of the effects of oil on embryonic fish, we didn’t think there was enough oil from the Cosco Busan spill to cause this much damage,” Cherr said. “We didn’t expect that the ultraviolet light would dramatically increase toxicity in the actual environment, as might observe in controlled laboratory experiments.”

One reason may be that crude oil, the kind spilled by the Exxon Valdez, is naturally occurring liquid petroleum. Bunker oil is a thick fuel oil distilled from crude oil and used as a fuel on ships. Bunker oil can be contaminated by other, unknown substances. In the case of the Cosco Busan, the bunker oil was relatively low in sulfur compared to some other bunker fuels but the embryos showed higher than expected levels of sulfur compounds.

Scientists from the University of California at Davis and NOAA studying herring spawning beds in San Francisco Bay after the Costco Busan oil spill. (UC Davis)

The scientists analyzed the levels of oil-based compounds in the caged herring embryos at four oiled and two-non oiled sub tidal sites, all at least one metre below the surface. Naturally spawned embryos from shallower areas were also studied.

In November, 2007, the spilled oil was visible in the areas chosen for the study. By the time the herring eggs were incubating, oil was not visible in the contaminated areas, except for some tar balls found on shore.

The researchers began the study in February 2008 . At the time, three months after the spill, the caged embryos showed non lethal heart defects, typical of exposure to oil spills. The embryos in the shallower sub tidal zones showed the same heart defects but also had “surprisingly high rates of dead tissue and mortality unrelated to the heart defects.”

“The embryos were literally falling apart with high rates of mortality,” Cherr said.

Normal herring embryos are translucent and colourless when they hatch, except for the pigment around the eye and melanophores (pigment cells) along the gut. The the brain, spinal cord and axial muscle from embryos from the oiled sites were not as clear. Those embryos had no heart beat and the skin tissue was disintegrating.

No toxicity was found in embryos in unoiled sites, even those close to major highways. The researchers concluded that the high death rates did not seem to be caused by natural or man made causes unrelated to the spill.

In 2009, when the scientists concentrated on the role of sunlight, the study showed that the embryos had death rates characterized by loss of tissue similar to the embryos from the year before, but possibly caused by undetected compounds from the oil spill.

In 2010, the scientists again looked at embryos from the oiled and unoiled sites. By that time, the hatching rates from the oiled sites were similar to the “relatively high hatching rates” for the unoiled areas. However, there was a “significant incidence” of heart problems among embryos from the oiled sites.

The scientists conclude that while the Exxon Valdez spill did show oil poisoning fish in the early stages of life, they say case wider research is needed beyond that done for in the case of the Exxon Valdez because the Cosco Busan

1. Highlights the difference in effects on fish from exposure to oil of differing composition (i.e. Crude vs bunker)
2. Shows the role of sunlight, interacting with local conditions (such as shallow water) can have significant affects on toxicity.
3. Shows the need for more study of the toxic effects of different oil compounds
4. The study has shown the “exceptional vulnerability of fish early stages to spilled oil.”

The conclusion adds “Although bunker oil typically accounts for only a small fraction of oil in ships, so spills may be small relative to those of crude oil, it may carry a potential for disproportionate impacts of in ecologically sensitive areas.”

Both Ellis Ross, Chief Counsellor of the Haisla Nation and April McLeod, president of the Kitimat Valley Naturalists expressed concern abut the findings of the study, especially with the Joint Review Hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline scheduled to begin a few days.

The numerous environmental critics of the Northern Gateway pipeline have pointed out that there is no way of knowing what would happen to an area like the Kitimat River, estuary and Douglas Channel is there was a bitumen spill. Enbridge has filed documents with the Joint Review Panel that include simulations of a spill. The new San Francisco study shows that any oil spill could have unforeseen effects.

Plans call for at least three new terminals to be built close to the Kitimat River estuary, not just the controversial Enbridge terminal for bitumen, but at least two for the liquified natural gas projects, KM LNG and BC LNG and in all three cases ships would normally be fueled by bunker oil.

The Kitimat estuary has been industrialized for 60 years since the building of the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter, but still has large areas teeming with fish and wildlife, so the estuary is somewhat in the middle between the heavily urbanized estuaries of San Francisco Bay and the more pristine Prince William Sound.

Ross pointed to the collapse of the oolichan in the Kitimat River as a strong indicator of potential problems. He recalls that in the early stages of the Eurocan paper mill the Haisla Nation was told there would be no effect on the oolichan, but soon after the mill began operations, the oolichan population collapsed. That is why, Ross said, the Haisla are wary of the plans and want to see more and stronger studies done on the effects of bitumen and other oil compounds in the region.

Other comments were unavailable due to the holiday. They will added as received.

Kitimat River estuary on Dec. 17, 2011, showing a Rio Tinto Alcan transmission tower. (Robin Rowland/Northwest Coast Energy News)

California Fish and Wildlife Cosco Busan spill web page.

According to Wikipedia, the US National Transportation Board found that the Cosco Busan accident was caused by

the pilot’s degraded cognitive performance from his use of prescription medications, despite his completely clean post accident drug test,
the absence of a comprehensive pre-departure master/pilot exchange and a lack of effective communication between Pilot John Cota and Master Mao Cai Sun during the accident voyage, and
(COSCO Busan Master) Sun’s ineffective oversight of Cota’s piloting performance and the vessel’s progress.

Other contributing factors included:

the failure of Fleet Management Ltd. to train the COSCO Busan crewmembers (which led to such acts of gross negligence as the bow lookout eating breakfast in the galley instead of being on watch) and Fleet Management’s failure to ensure that the crew understood and complied with the company’s safety management system;

the failure of Caltrans to maintain foghorns on the bridge which were silent despite the heavy fog;

the failure of Vessel Traffic Safety (VTS) to alert Cota and Sun that they were headed for the tower. VTS is legally required to alert a vessel if an accident appears imminent, yet they remained silent;

the malfunctioning radar on the COSCO Busan, which led Captains Cota and Sun to use an electronic chart for the rest of the voyage. Although Coast Guard investigators found the radar to be in working order, they did not examine it until days after the accident (allowing time for faulty equipment to be fixed, which is not uncommon after a marine accident)

Captain Sun’s incorrect identification of symbols on the electronic chart;

the U.S. Coast Guard’s failure to provide adequate medical oversight of Cota, in view of the medical and medication information he had reported to the Coast Guard.

NTSB report on the Cosco Busan accident (pdf)

Joint Review releases first round schedule, Gateway ruling put off for a year

Energy Hearings

The Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel has released its schedule for first round hearings for the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

The panel will visit most of the towns along the pipeline route and the coast. One surprise is that the bulk of the northwestern hearings will be held in Prince Rupert, not Kitimat as expected. Kitimat, where the pipeline will reach the sea and where the terminal will be gets just two days of hearings. There will be eight days of formal hearings in Prince Rupert. While this may be a logistical decision, there isn’t that much accommodation available in Kitimat, the decision shows that the panel seems to consider Kitimat no different than any other community along the pipeline route. Prince Rupert is not on the planned pipeline route (at least at this time) There are also six days of hearings in Edmonton, which is logical, since that city is the headquarters of the energy industry.

Here is the schedule as posted on the website of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency

Location	Venue	Date and Start Time
Kitimat, BC	Riverlodge Recreation Center 654 Columbia Avenue West	10 and 11 January 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Terrace, BC	Sportsplex 3320 Kalum Street	12 January 2012 Starting at 1:00 p.m.
Smithers, BC	Hudson Bay Lodge and Convention Centre 3251 East Highway 16	16 January 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Burns Lake, BC	Island Gospel Fellowship Church 810 Highway 35	17 January 2012 Starting at 1:00 p.m.
Prince George, BC	Ramada Hotel Downtown 444 George Street	18 January 2012 Starting at 6:00 p.m.
Edmonton, AB	Wingate Inn Edmonton West Hotel 18220 – 100th Avenue	24, 25, 26, 27, 30 and 31 January 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Fort St. James, BC	Royal Canadian Legion, Branch no. 268 330 – 4th Avenue East	2 February 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Bella Bella, BC	Heiltsuk Elders Building	3 February 2012 Starting at 6:30 p.m. 4 February 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Prince Rupert, BC	North Coast Meeting and Convention Centre 240 – 1st Avenue West	16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 February 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Masset, BC	Howard Phillips Community Hall 1590 Cook Street	28 February 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Queen Charlotte City, BC	Queen Charlotte Community Hall134 Bay Street	29 February 2012 Starting at 1:00 p.m.
Grande Prairie, AB	Quality Hotel and Conference Centre 11201 – 100 Avenue	26 March 2012 Starting at 6:00 p.m. 27 and 28 March 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.
Courtenay, BC	To be determined	30 and 31 March and 2 and 3 April 2012 Starting at 9:00 a.m.

Other locations where the venue availability and logistics have not yet been confirmed include: Klemtu, BC, Hartley Bay, BC, Kitkatla, BC and Bella Coola, BC.

After the Panel has heard all oral evidence, it will then hear oral statements and will follow this estimated schedule.

Estimated Time Frame	Activity
Late March – July 2012	Oral statements from registered participants who live in or near the proposed Project area.
September – October 2012	Final hearings where the applicant, intervenors, government participants and the Panel will question those who have presented oral or written evidence.
November 2012 – March 2013	Oral statements from registered participants who do not live in or near the proposed Project area (i.e. Kelowna, Port Hardy, Victoria, Vancouver, and Calgary).
April 2013	Final argument from the applicant, intervenors and government participants.

That schedule means that the Joint Review Panel will not make any decision on the pipeline until the end of 2013. In the original schedule, final arguments were to be held in June 2012, with a final decision in early fall.

Little difference between diluted bitumen and conventional crude affect on pipelines, Alberta review says

Energy Environment

A study by an Alberta provincial government agency has concluded that diluted bitumen (also known in the industry as “dilbit”) is little different in its effects on pipelines than conventional or ‘non-oil sands derived’ crude oil.

A review of existing studies was conducted by Jenny Been, P.Eng for the provincial agency, Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures. A news release on the website describes Been as a “corrosion specialist.” The study “concludes that the characteristics of dilbit are not unique and are comparable to conventional crude oils during pipeline flow.”

Link News release and study (pdf)
Comparison of the Corrosivity of Dilbit and Conventional Crude

Been’s study takes on the contention that dilbit has higher acid, sulfur, and chloride salts and higher concentrations of abrasive solids than conventional crude. As well, the study looks at the belief that dilbit transmission pipelines operate at higher operating temperatures compared with crude, which would make the dilbit more corrosive. Environmentalists and other critics say this leads to a higher failure rate than pipelines carrying crude.

The study compared the properties of heavy, medium, and light conventional Alberta crude oils with three dilbit and one dilsynbit (a mixture of conventional gas diluent and synthetic gas) crude.

The review concludes “that the characteristics of dilbit are not unique and are comparable to conventional crude oils.”

While two of the four dilbit crudes displayed a slightly higher naphthenic acid and sulfur concentration than the conventional Alberta heavy crudes, the review notes that there are conventional crudes on the market that have displayed higher values. It says while there have been corrosion problems at refineries where the temperature can exceed 200 C, it says “the much lower pipeline transportation temperatures, the compounds are too stable to be corrosive and some may even decrease the corrosion rate.”

The study also says “sediment levels of the dilbit crudes were comparable to or lower than the conventional crudes, except for a dilsynbit crude, which showed more than double the quantity of solids than most other crudes, but was still well below the limit set by regulatory agencies and industry….Erosion corrosion was found to be improbable and erosion, if present, is expected to be gradual and observed by regular mitigation practices.”

The study’s recommendations note that it is a review and “It has to be understood that this was a high-level review and a focused, peer-reviewed study has not been conducted. The scope of the work did not include interviews with industry, regulators, or colleagues.”

It calls for the industry to create a database that would further study that differences between dilbit oils and conventional crude oils, including further study of sludge formation and deposition in the pipeline and the links, if any, “on sludge chemistry to pipeline sludge formation and sludge corrosivity, including the ability of the sludge to support microbial populations.”

Been says in the study that Enbridge supports an industry working group on pipeline corrosion management that is “addressing these issues by correlating sludge corrosivity with a chemical and microbial geochemical characterization of the sludge. The work is further considering and optimizing monitoring technologies to enable measurement of the effectiveness of mitigation treatments. It is recommended that this effort will continue to be supported.”

While the study is a review of existing knowledge on diluted bitumen and conventional oil in pipelines, Been’s introductory remarks clearly show a bias in favour of the bitumen sands, saying, before the Keystone XL project approval was delayed by the U.S. State Department, “TransCanada Pipeline’s (TCPL’s) $13 billion Keystone pipeline system will provide a secure and growing supply of Canadian crude oil to the largest refining markets in the Unites States.”

Been also notes

Environmental groups opposed to the pipelines continue to find material to fuel their concerns: the more than 800,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan last year came from the Cold Lake oil sands region, and the Exxon Mobil spill of 42,000 barrels of oil in the Yellowstone River may have contained dilbit. Protestors against the Keystone pipeline are gathering in demonstrations across North America leading to mass arrests and drawing widespread attention.

The arguments of these environmental groups don’t go unheard with congressmen and other government officials, who have iterated reported statements and concerns. The United States Department of States (DOS) has spent the last three years in review with the industry, scientific community, and other interest parties (including numerous public meetings), evaluating the purpose and need for the Project (pipeline), alternatives, and the associated potential environmental impacts. The result was issued on August 26, 2011 in a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), a comprehensive, detailed volume of work that is available to the public. Public hearings were held and online comments were accepted.

Been notes that as part of the Keystone assessment, the US Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued 57
Project-specific Special Conditions above and beyond the requirements of the United States pipeline code for Keystone XL. Been says TransCanada agreed to the incorporation of the 57 conditions and said would result in a pipeline with a greater degree of safety than typical domestic pipelines.

Environmental groups said the 57 conditions on Keystone were not sufficient, Been noted and the report goes on to say:

Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert considers it a challenge of combating emotion with facts, and assures that the facts could be obtained without too much difficulty. Concerns continue to surface in the media and in the face of few factual studies and a strong confidence in … tracking statistics that dilbit is not more corrosive than conventional oil, corrosivity claims continue to be used as fuel by certain environmental groups.

Yet if Enbridge and other energy companies are still working on pipeline corrosion, as Been notes, then there are still problems to be solved.

Given the pro-Keystone statements in the Been’s paper, it is clear that a definitive, independent study is needed on the effects of diluted bitumen in a pipeline, one that doesn’t come from either a pro-energy industry point of view, nor one conducted by an environmental group that would bring criticism from the energy industry.

Until there is such an independent study, the doubts of the environmental activists must be balanced with assurances coming from the energy industry.